Visited Ahhaa science centre with a bunch of friends of various ages. Their interactive exhibits captured everyone’s attention for hours.

The current temporary exhibition was AI-themed. We got to try out AI attempting to deduce our emotions, recognize images, drive a toy car, etc. Very well done.

The exhibition also included a kind of a poll about visitors’ views on AI. Would you trust an AI diagnosis? Fly an AI-piloted flight? Would you be more inclined to forgive a human or an AI for a mistake they made?

I’ve got mixed feelings about this. It’s easy to be distracted by LLMs and other generative AI, and forget about all the other kinds of AI out there, doing more workmanlike tasks. I rather like AI analysing X-ray images and sifting through tons of data to find anomalies.

The statement I was most positive about was “I can imagine AI teaching me”. And I absolutely can. An AI-curated, individually adjusted learning path, instead of listening to pre-prepared hour-long videos where I find myself skipping half – yes please. Then I thought about AI teaching children, especially at a younger age, and my immediate reaction was a visceral “no”.

In the evening we gathered and played “Bang”, which has for many years been our go-to game for large groups. I might be growing just a little bit tired of it, but we only play it for a few evenings each summer, and it’s become a firm tradition by now.